FCRA §613: The Quietest Section of the FCRA and the Easiest to Break

FCRA §613 is the section nobody reads until the deposition. It governs how a consumer reporting agency reports public-record information — primarily criminal records — that may adversely affect a candidate's employment.

The two compliance paths under §613

1. Notice path: at the time the public-record information is reported to the employer, the CRA simultaneously notifies the candidate that the information is being reported and provides the name and address of the employer.
2. Strict-procedures path: the CRA maintains strict procedures to ensure the public-record information is complete and up-to-date at the time of reporting.

The CRA must pick one. The employer must know which one its CRA picked. Most employers do not.

What 'complete and up-to-date' actually means

• The conviction, charge, or disposition reflected in the report matches the current state of the public record on the date of the report — not the date the CRA last touched the underlying data feed.
• Aggregated national database hits must be confirmed against the originating county court before being reported as an adverse-decision input.
• The Henderson v. HireRight line of cases makes courthouse re-verification the operational standard.

Why the notice path is harder than it looks

Notice-path CRAs must send the candidate a contemporaneous notice including the name and address of the employer. That second piece — the employer identity — is the trigger for the most common §613 challenge: a notice that does not match the actual employer of record on the requisition is treated as no notice at all.

How SafestHires runs §613

1. Strict-procedures path on every public-record report — every database hit re-verified at the source court before adverse reporting.
2. Notice path used only where the candidate has waived the strict-procedure pathway in writing — vanishingly rare.
3. Hiring-manager view never shows unverified database hits.
4. Audit trail records the source-court verification date for every reported record.

The one question to ask your CRA today

Send your CRA a one-line email: 'Which FCRA §613 path do you use for public-record reporting?' If the answer is not immediate, specific, and the same answer your defense counsel would give, you have a §613 exposure to remediate before your next requisition.